Since the desintegration of Yugoslavia, the construction of national identities took place on various levels, also in music. In this paper, the concept of national identity as seen through analysis of the musical programmes of one state ceremony and one festival of patriotic song is discussed. The main point of this paper may be summarised in the following clame. Music is an age-old pointer of nationality. Yet in the last two decades nationality in music wavers to and fro between two concepts or types of national identity construction through music. The one includes historical facets of the musical heritage in a variety of musical styles (one may call it ‘aesthetical identity’), whereas the other one is rather often determined through song texts and their universals of patriotic imagery (love, beauty, braveness of the people etc. in aesthetically rather confined space of several pop-music genres; it may be labelled ‘functional’). The details of this wavering between two concepts of nationality in music is discussed along the lines of the music programmes of one state ceremony and a festival of patriotic songs.